“Announce plans to improve the quality of your equipment. ... Announce plans to guarantee adequate staff to support first deployment of the new equipment. ... Negotiate supportive policies for software licensing fees, especially for small counties. ... Announce a provision for 'open-source' software.” These are all requests of two potential vendors of voting systems to New York State in an open letter to them from New Yorkers for Verified Voting. See our ‘Featured’ article [PDF]....

The AP has finally noticed the long-sought criminal investigation ballot count of the 2006 Pima County (Tucson), AZ, special election. State Attorney General Terry Goddard's hand-count of the disputed Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election was concluded, at least for now, in Phoenix on Wednesday. That's when AP filed its report on the matter that we've been covering here at The BRAD BLOG in a number of special reports and exclusives, in great detail, this week, last week, and for several years prior.

AP's coverage was fairly cursory (recent inside joke: AP didn't report who the AG's office had found to be the "leading vote-getter"), but it hit a few points worth noting, including one of the key take-aways from the entire, epic morality tale still playing out on behalf of the entire U.S., in Arizona:

There you have it. That's why this story matters, and why it's far more than simply a "local story."

It also matters on a still-broader level because, even if the 2006 Tucson RTA election wasn't rigged --- and it's three years on, and nobody yet actually seems to know for certain --- due to the god-awful, privatized, untested, hackable, oft-failed, secret vote-counting machines we now use in our public elections, it's become virtually impossible to know if any elections counted on such machines were accurately tabulated.

AP notes that Goddard seems to finally be understanding that larger point, at least:

The Arizona Republic's Dennis Wagner pulled some details from AP's cursory coverage and augmented it substantially for more lengthy, detailed coverage filed on Wednesday as well, which we're happy to see and recommend.

In a related note: Tucson election integrity advocate John Brakey saw charges against him dismissed by a judge today, following his arrest ordered by Pima County election officials last year during a state-mandated, post-election hand-count --- a statutory mandate that likely would not have existed were it not for Brakey's advocacy for such post-election "audits."

The county's case against him was so bad Brakey wasn't even required to put on his own defense before the judge dismissed the case entirely after hearing the county's testimony. The recent criminal investigation hand count carried out by Goddard, and all of the issues discussed above, would also likely never have come to light in Arizona, had it not been for the tenacity, courage, and tireless determination of Brakey. Exclusive details on today's dismissed charges against him posted earlier here...

My apologies for the lateness of DVN this evening but when you lose the Internet you lose all contact with the world it seems. For those of you concerned with the voters right to actually vote I suggest reading the articles concerning Florida’s Senate Bill 956 that will do a lot to suppress the vote. Also the articles from Texas including the fact that the DoJ may have to weigh-in on any VoterID laws passed by that state’s legislature to keep the state in compliance with the National Voting Rights Act Section 5....

[Updated at bottom of article with video of trial testimony and the judge's dismissal of the case.]

Along with everything else that's been going on over the past week or two in the criminal investigation hand count of the 2006 Pima County (Tucson), AZ, special election (see our detailed special coverage here and here, with a bit of followup coming tonight, by the way. [UPDATE: Here's that late report.]), local election integrity watchdog John Brakey has had a trial of his own to contend with this week, following his arrest last September, while serving as an official observer during a post-election hand-count "audit" of the state's primary election on behalf of both the Democratic and Libertarian Parties.

As The BRAD BLOG reported at the time, Brakey had noticed that a number of ballot bags, selected for the hand-count, had missing or broken security seals on them. When he asked about them, he was promptly arrested on the orders of Pima's "Election Director Gone Wild" Brad Nelson, a Republican and long-time foe of Brakey's.

The case against Brakey, heard in court this afternoon, was dismissed by Judge Luis Castillo after the county presented its evidence on the charges of "trespassing," as we were informed today by Brakey and his attorney Bill Risner, who wouldn't even need to plead their own case to the judge today...

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

“This long delay in the seating of Minnesota’s second U.S. Senator has come at a time when our state badly needs help from Washington. Since Election Day, Minnesota has lost 56,000 jobs. Since Election Day more than 9,000 Minnesota families have lost their homes to foreclosure.”
--Senator-elect Al Franken (D-MN), 4/13/09 statement

The Monday, April 13, 2009 decision [PDF] came as as no surprise, certainly not here at The BRAD BLOG where we concluded on Feb. 22, 2009 that former Sen. Norm Coleman’s legal challenge to the Jan. 5, 2009 bi-partisan MN state canvassing board's determination that Al Franken had won the U.S. Senate election was “dead in its tracks.”

Earlier this month, at a time when the mainstream media got it wrong, we accurately reported that the April 7, 2009 order [PDF] meant that the last of the lawfully cast votes had been counted; that Franken won, and; Coleman lost. We went on to predict that the three-judge panel would likely “provide a written explanation of its denial of any other relief…when it enters a final judgment…” We added: “But make no mistake. There are no more votes to be counted. 312 votes is the margin of victory for Al Franken over Norm Coleman.”

In fact, there were no more votes to be counted, as we reported, even as the bulk of the rest of the media hedged their bets. So with the votes all tallied determining that Franken was the victor, and Coleman lacking any legitimate legal recourse, what are Franken's legal and political options, and when might he finally take his rightful seat in the U.S. Senate?...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Goodbye Tax Day '08, Hello Tax Day '09 (with big new incentives to sweeten the deal); Birds taking the long way home; "Greenwashing"; PLUS: Solar power...in SPAAAAACE.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips or hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): Six Degrees of Tom Delay, or How a Climate Denier Helped the EPA Get Its Groove Back; abandoned housing developments reverting to nature; Norway lays claim to (part of) the Arctic; the high energy cost of spam; AND: the Somali pirate problem --- toxic dumping and overfishing to blame? ....See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

The following is one of the stunning revelations in our ‘Featured’ article today.

...

-- Brad Friedman, A BRAD BLOG Special Report

In a letter written to the Arizona Attorney General's office on Monday, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG, the attorney for the Pima County (Tucson) Democratic Party has expressed a concern that thousands of ballots from a disputed 2006 special election, which should be in the AG's possession, may instead be "missing".

"Many thousands of ballots that should be in the ballot boxes in your possession don't exist," attorney Bill Risner writes in the 3-page letter [PDF] to Donald E. Conrad, Chief Counsel of the Criminal Division at the office of state Attorney General Terry Goddard. The alarming allegations come as the second week of an extraordinary hand-count of paper ballots, part of a criminal investigation into the '06 election, continued in Phoenix on Monday.

A spokesperson from the Attorney General's office says she believes the count will be concluded on Wednesday, though that could change. It was originally scheduled to conclude last week.

The AG is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that that election may have been electronically manipulated by election official insiders. The special election created Tucson's Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in May of 2006, and funded it with a joint bond measure to the tune of $2 billion over ten years. The Pima Democratic Party had endorsed the two RTA ballots questions in the election, but they now question the legitimate success of the measures. They've been bringing court cases to access ballot materials, and have been demanding a hand-count of the ballots for a number of years. Similar RTA initiatives had failed in four previous elections before they were finally passed in 2006.

"If we are correct," Risner wrote in his Monday letter to the Attorney General's office, concerning the absence of as many as 19,000 paper ballots, as estimated by observers of the counting in Phoenix, "the question arises as to what happened to those ballots." The latest mystery adds still more fuel to the already high-stakes, long-sought hand-count, and raises new questions in the nearly three-years long investigation into the 2006 election results.

If the ballots are indeed missing, did they ever actually exist? Was the Diebold electronic ballot box stuffed? Have ballots been surreptitiously removed by someone for some reason? Or have observers miscalculated the number of ballots being examined? The AG's Press Secretary Anne Titus Hilby tells The BRAD BLOG she's aware of the allegations of missing ballots but could not speak to that point in any more detail "until the examination is concluded"...

From the Minnesota Senatorial court decision [PDF]:

...

Welcome aboard MORE new affiliates! Bob Kincaid's Head-On Radio Network joins the GNR team!

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Florida homes stink!; FDA under fire (again); McDonald's may reduce pesticides in fries; PLUS: The cardboard box that could save the world; And the Utah college student indicted for saving public lands from destruction...All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, college student indictments? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): Alaskan volcano still threatens oil facility; Are America's suburbs in danger of becoming the new slums?; the Oil Price Shock of 2008 may have triggered the current economic downturn; Robert Redford confronts the NIMBY problem in renewable energy sites....See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

That's right, according to AP tonight, following the just released final ruling [PDF] from the 3-judge election contest court in Minnesota, Senator-elect Al Franken (D-MN) is not the "winner" of the election. Rather, he's merely the "leading vote-getter."

Are they kidding?! "Leading vote-getter"?! Apparently not.

Will that be how AP reports the results of elections on Election Nights from now on? The one with the most votes counted in the unofficial results will be the "leading vote-getter"? Somehow, we've got the feeling that AP's headline refers only to this race, and only since it's Franken, not Coleman, who actually won.

As The BRAD BLOG pointed out late last week, Franken isn't "leading" as the New York Times, MSNBC and others reported it last week after the court's final tally of all lawfully cast ballots concluded. And he certainly isn't the "leading vote-getter." Franken won. After one of the most painstaking and transparent hand counts, and then one of the longest election contests in U.S. history, it has been determined that Franken received more lawfully cast votes than anybody else in the race. Period. Furthermore, he has no legal leg to stand on in his likely appeal(s), as we detailed last week. All of that makes Franken the winner of the election, and former Sen. Norm Coleman the loser.

If Coleman wishes to try to overturn Franken's win --- and he's promised an appeal to the MN Supreme Court at the very least --- that's up to him. But Franken won the election. Got that AP? New York Times, et al?! Is that so difficult to report accurately?!

UPDATE 5:41pm PT: The rest of the media, other than AP, appear to be doing better in reporting on Franken's win tonight...

UPDATE 7:13pm PT: NY Times' headline: "In Minnesota, Another Blow to Coleman". Apparently "the paper of record" continues it's allergy to the word "win," along with AP. Downplaying the facts of the matter, Adam Nagourney writes tonight:

"Further diminishes his hopes of holding onto his seat"?! That, despite the rather clear pronouncement in the MN court's ruling today [PDF]:

Is that unclear?! In most worlds, other than the Times' and AP's in 2009, that would mean Franken has won. But the Times, like AP, just can't seem to say it. Now why would that be?

UPDATE 7:53pm PT: A commenter at DU notes wryly:

I'm impressed, frankly, with the unflinching outspokenness of Meghan McCain (John's daughter) in her quest to restore sanity, and a future, to the Republican Party. No idea whether she'll have any success --- at least for the foreseeable future --- but her willingness to stand straight up to her own party's not-minimal thuggery is impressive.

Today, McCain is out and out calling for the GOP to "Go Gay" by embracing same sex marriage (she still calls it "gay marriage," but that's because she's still a Republican), and begins her case by pointing out that it was the GOP deity himself, Ronald Reagan, as Governor of CA in 1978, who fended off a ballot proposition which would have outlawed gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools.

"Reagan’s argument centered around the idea that parents already had all the rights they needed to protect their children and that the government did not need to interfere," McCain notes, pointing to an actual conservative doctrine which the GOP has all but abandoned in their bigoted, unConstitutional demands for Big Government intervention into the private lives of homosexual Americans.

I'm digging fairly deeply into the details of what could be a tremendously important story to come (unrelated to this issue), so for the moment I'll just leave you with a few of the money quotes from her essay at The Daily Beast today:

She finishes with the incredibly overly optimistic notion: "I believe the Republican Party has, at this moment, the opportunity to come forward and play an instrumental role in securing gay rights." Nonetheless, she deserves credit and kudos for having the courage to say it. It's a pity it'll likely fall on so many deaf, crazy, tea-bagging ears.

Discuss.

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